My earache got steadily worse, or at least it didn’t get any better and spasmodic pain a few times a minute can be amazingly wearing. So it ended up with Toni and myself visiting the doctor separately today. Toni to give in a sample for analysis and me to get something for my ear.
When I got to see my doctor he ignored my
plaintive bleating about my ear and concentrated instead of getting up to date
with my medical situation. In no time at
all I was given a date to have yet more blood taken; an instruction to visit
the nurse immediately after I had finished with him, and another appointment
made to discuss the results of the analysis.
I did also manage to get a prescription for
some ear drops out of him which have had, on their first application absolutely
no effect whatsoever. However, I live
in faith and am a great believer in the placebo effect and one or other of
those must have some effect.
More importantly than all of the preceding,
today is the first day of the new Ruta de tapas (tapa and drink only €3) and,
in spite of my not feeling 100% we have done two. Toni has instructed me to write about each of
these “events” so that we can refer back to them in our dotage!
The first was in Restaurant El Mussol, Av.
De la Pineda, 24 and was an Owl Burger.
Not that a protected bird was used in its manufacture, but simply that
Mussol is the Catalan word for Owl.
This mini-burger in a sesame seed mini-bun was excellent with a burger that actually tasted as if it had been made of real meat. It was served with caramelized onion, tomato, lettuce and goat’s cheese with a BBQ sauce. Fresh, hot and delicious with the sauce not overpowering everything. We were also told that they do Mex-Tex evenings and, on the strength of this sample, it might well be worth a future visit.
This mini-burger in a sesame seed mini-bun was excellent with a burger that actually tasted as if it had been made of real meat. It was served with caramelized onion, tomato, lettuce and goat’s cheese with a BBQ sauce. Fresh, hot and delicious with the sauce not overpowering everything. We were also told that they do Mex-Tex evenings and, on the strength of this sample, it might well be worth a future visit.
That surely is the worth of this Ruta de
Tapa, it should be something delicious enough by itself to get the customer to
consider staying for something more substantial. This is certainly what happened when we had
the tapa at El Elephant and I look forward to this happening again during the
course of the Ruta which is from today, the 1st of July to the 15th
of September.
We did not mean to go to the restaurant we ended up in,
but our geography was slightly wrong and we didn’t mind making do with what was
in front of us. In a similar way we
experienced the luck of incompetence with our second “choice”.
Wherever we meant to go we ended up sitting
down outside Dehesa Santa Maria, Av. Santa Maria, 27 in the centre of
town. The tapa when it finally arrived (the single waiter was a little slow) was an elegantly structured edifice all
held together with a rather fetching long stick with a red painted circular fiddly bit towards the end.
The base was of flatbread with a squirt of
mayo on either end, on top of that was red pepper and on top of that in the
centre was a rolled slice of jamón ibérico flanked by two halves of a
mini-chorizo. On top of the jamón was an
olive, and resting on that was a gherkin; gherkin, olive, ham and bread being
impaled by the stylish stick.
This was a tapa which was impossible to eat
in one go! And when you did manage to
get most of it into your mouth it was a somewhat confusing though pleasurable
mixture of flavours.
Two excellent tapas to start off our
ruta. Bring on the other 54!
Guests should be warned that they WILL be
participating should they chance to visit us!
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